


1 Day 1Newmann 2020 prompts

by Hamyheikki



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:08:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24335650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hamyheikki/pseuds/Hamyheikki
Summary: A collection of my fics for 2020's Newmann challenge month.
Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	1. Leisure Time

“You know, I bet I could make a plane out of this.”

Up at his chalkboard, Hermann’s hand halted mid-equation as he turned to glance down. 

“I beg your pardon?”

Pacing around his own side of the lab (occasionally hopping over puddles of… whatever had leaked out of his experiments that day), Newton was waving a sheet of paper around. His headphones had come off, so Hermann had to assume the man was talking to him, rather than muttering to himself like he sometimes did when listening to the music and trying to solve a particularly tough issue. When Hermann glanced at the small workbench where most of Newton’s tools usually lied, he could see that they had been put away for the day. The sight piqued his interest, for Newton was not the type to slack off while in work. Not in a meaningful way, anyway. Sometimes it was near impossible to drag him out of the lab. 

But now, he was clearly in no intention to work further, as he kept on inspecting the paper, weighing it in his hand.

Curiosity won out in the end. “What on earth are you babbling about?” Hermann asked, carefully climbing down from his ladder. Once safely on floor, he took another look at the paper, and made the connection to the earlier statement. “… Paper planes, Newton?” he rolled his eyes. “Really?”

Nodding along, Newton flashed him a wide grin. “I was really nifty at it when I was a kid.” The paper was placed flat on the nearby table, and Newton started to bend the corners. “It’s one of those things you can do all by yourself.” 

Hermann was aware that neither his or Newton’s childhood had fallen within what most would call the frames of “normal”, but even after such a long time, he still had troubles admitting such things out loud. But he was intrigued. After a moment of thought, he could recall tinkering with some scale models of planes when he was around ten, and the nostalgic sense began to raise its head. 

With a final glance at the chalkboards, and the unfinished code found there, Hermann made his decision.

“If you’re insisting on playing around, at least do so properly.” His cane supported him as he reached to pull down a box of copy paper from a shelf beside the printer. Once Newton had taken it from his hands, he went and rolled one of the smaller blackboards to the tapeline separating their sides. 

As Newton folded and taped the papers together, Hermann picked up a chalk and began calculating.

* * *

“Good afternoon, gentlemen. I -” the Marshall stopped, blinking at what appeared to be a paper plane the size of a small car, build in the middle of the lab floor.

A shrill voice quickly moved his attention from the plane to the two men standing each side of it.

“Pentecost! You were in the air force once, yeah?”

His head moved to nod before he could catch himself. 

_What on earth…_

“Awesome! Hey, can you tell that this is F-16 Falcon?”

He could, actually. And the realization made him all the more unnerved. His eyes scanned the room further, noticing the long lines of numbers and chalk-drawn blueprints on the blackboard beside the plane, as well as nervous, fidgety Gottlieb who didn’t quite meet his gaze like Geiszler had unashamedly done.

“I see you have been busy,” he eventually managed. If only to himself, Pentecost had to admit it was an impressive feat, crafting an identical replica of a fighter plane with paper alone.

As expected, Geiszler merely waved his hinting comment off. “It only took about two hours, can you believe? Obviously it was difficult to know how much paper would go and where, but Hermann came up with a formula and from there we could determine that -”

His explanation took off, as it often did, and Pentecost made the conscious decision to not even try and follow along. He’d had a reason to come down here. There were reports needing to be collected, and data he’d hoped would be waiting for him, ready to be passed on to LOCCENT. But evidently his research division had taken a half a day off, and judging by the behavior of the two men in question, Pentecost had no issues guessing whose idea it had been.

However, Geiszler was watching their shared creation with openly bright pride, and Pentecost could see the same glint, although much better sealed, in Gottlieb’s eyes.

He sighed.

“I will be back in by 17:00 pm. I expect you are done by then.”

Immediately, Gottlieb’s hand rose to a salute, even as his partner did nothing to acknowledge the command.

“Of course, sir.”

Walking away, Pentecost could hear the usual bickering flare up behind him.

It did have a softer tone to it.


	2. Letters

The order has been issued: All personnel currently situated in the Shatterdome must be ready to depart in two week’s time. The war was over, nation wanted their land back, and even though there had been suggestions about using the base as a research site going forward, the idea had been shut down by the government. And so, in the windy morning few days after the battle, the halls of Humanity’s Last Stance are filled with soldiers, pilots and mechanics, all running past and over each other in their hurry to try and gather their belongings before the deadline. Corridors, narrow to begin with, are piled up with suitcases, metal-sealed chests and pieces of furniture. It was getting difficult to move around

And yet, not everybody is part of the hassle. Sitting on one of the containment boxes, Mako merely watches as her comrades rush around. She had knew this was coming from the moment they hit the shores after the final mission, it only being a matter of time. Over the last days, she has already put away all her personal items of importance, tossing away everything she couldn’t see herself needing in the near future, and therefore having nothing left to tend to. It was calming, in a way, to merely sit and let the scene play out before her without taking part of it. She had been in the focus of so many eyes lately, it was a relief to simply… _be_.

But as many things in life, it was not meant to last. A sudden movement to her left catches her attention, and when she turns to look, she notices a young soldier standing a few feet away. He has a clipboard in his hand, and a nervous smile on his face.

“Uhh… Ms. Mako Mori?”

“Yes.” Out of habit, she jumps up from her seat, coming to stand face to face with the man. “And you are?”

“A… A private Lewis, ma’am! From 6. division!” He makes a hasty salute, one which Mako waves off immediately. The younger members of the Shatterdome teams had taken it upon themselves to start to salute the personal who were intimately connected to the shutting of the Breach, and while she appreciated the gesture, it had, from the start, made her uncomfortable.

She could see the tension leaving the man’s body as she offers a small, relaxed smile. “At ease. Was there something you needed from me?” The clipboard isn’t in her direct line of sight, so she can’t quite make out what is being written on it. From a quick glance, it looks like a schedule. 

Lewis’ next words confirmed her suspicions. “Yeah! Hansen - Uhh, the _Marshal_ asked me to pass a request on for you.” He glances down at the papers, scanning for a moment. Eventually he finds what he’s looking for. “He asked if you could go and help out with the dismantling of the K-science wing? Apparently they are running late with the departure preparations.”

A small smirk climbs on her lips before Lewis makes it to the end of the sentence. Of course, she has been keeping an eye out for two men still lurking in the lowest floors of the Shatterdome. To her, it had been obvious from the very start that doctors Gottlieb and Geiszler would be the last people to leave the base, and in case of Geiszler in particular, it might require someone literally carrying the man out of the door. She doesn’t judge though. The Dome has been a home for them just as long as it has been one for her, and the idea of it suddenly being shut down doesn’t sit well with some of its residents. Especially those who had been there for years.

But it had to be done. And the faster, the better.

“Understood. I’ll see what I can do,” she says, picking up her satchel from the ground. “You can tell Marshal that it’ll be sorted out.” 

With that, she spins around and starts to walk to the maintenance elevator.

* * *

“You know bloody well how long it took for me to program that! Unlike your mindless poking, my work cannot simply be rammed into an under-powered fridge for transport!”

“It’s a _disk_ , Hermann! An ancient fucking disk, which nobody has used since the invention of a thumb-drive! Can’t you just, I dunno, copy it all on a device that hasn’t been memed by the whole population of Earth since 2005?”

“ _Copy… !_ Do you have _any_ idea how delicate that information is, one can’t just _copy_ and _paste_ it on multiple -”

“Doctors?”

It was quite unsettling how in sync the two men move nowadays. As both of them fall silent and turn to look at her standing by the door, she can clearly see the effect left behind their shared Drift. They are very close to each other, few inches apart and yet seemingly still not close _enough_. Out of the two, Mako had always felt Dr. Gottlieb to be the more reserved one by far, but now, he is just as, if not more animated as Dr. Geiszler. She had walked in and ended up in the middle of a bickering battle, but after witnessing the two go head to head for ages now, she had noticed the difference in the atmosphere. Biting, sharp-witted, yes. But completely in sync.

Geiszler’s bright smile, however, hasn’t changed in the slightest. “Mako!” Hastily moving towards her, his grin grows ever wider. “Didn’t know you were coming! Sorry about that,” he points over his shoulder to his partner, who merely rolls his eyes, “we’re kinda in the middle of something.”

“So it’d seem” Mako answers and once-over around the room. It does looks as though they have been putting away some larger pieces of machinery Mako remembers being here in the past, but all of their personal items, as well as a great deal of papers, formulas and kaiju samples are still very much present in the lab. “You were… cleaning?”

“We were, until _someone_ decided to throw a fit over a floppy disk.”

Gottlieb jumps in just then, posture rigid: “It was not a floppy disk, Newton! It is a memory disk, containing a large -”

“ - large part of the original Jager code! I know, you keep repeating that!” Geiszler’s eye-roll is nearly identical to the one Gottlieb had displayed just a second ago.

“Then I cannot fathom why you insist on my concerns being unfounded -”

“Because you think that your precious disk cannot handle a short flight back to UK! It’s not made of glass, Hermann!”

“Oh, so it is perfectly acceptable for _you_ to worry about those slime-balls you stacked in the container, but not for me to be concerned about of my life’s work?”

Before Geiszler can bark out a new reply, Mako raises her own voice. “Gentlemen, _please_. There is supposed to be cleaning going on, yes?” She makes a meaningful circle in place, gesturing to the room. “And the man upstairs is beginning to turn impatient.”

The shared widening of the two pairs of eyes is comical in its own right. Geiszler is the first one to recover.

“So… Hansen is not too pleased, huh?”

Mako shakes her head. “No. I was sent ahead, as a peace negotiator I suspect.” The comment brings Geiszler’s grin back, and Mako answers in kind. She has always liked the short scientist, and his passion for what he does has had a great impact on Mako while growing up in the Shatterdome. Being surrounded mostly by military personnel, it had been a relief to have a man like Newton around. And she has an utmost respect towards Dr. Gottlieb as well. In every way, he is a steady presence to balance Geiszler’s enthusiasm. When she thinks back to her time in the Shatterdome, and the silent guidance by example she has received from both men, helping them clean up a lab doesn’t sound too imposing of a task.

She is ripped out of her thoughts by Gottlieb’s dry cough, the man appearing to take in the state of the room too. “We’d better get started. If you are willing to lend us a hand, that is.” It isn’t a question, more of a statement of a fact, and Mako is more than happy to roll with it. She nods, and sets her bag down on a counter.

“That’s what I am here for.”

* * *

It takes them a good part of the hour just to bulldoze a path from the two workbenches to the main door. Despite most of the specimen tank being carried out a few days prior, there are still one or two remaining, and Geiszler is forced to ring for a couple of rangers to come and pick them up. Once the space is more open, they start to go through the piles of miscellaneous items littered all over the counters, chairs and floor. Mostly old coffee mugs and discarded blueprints, with a bit of kaiju fluids added to the mix. All and all, it is rather mundane work, up to the point where Gottlieb suddenly halts his screening of the document cabinet and speak out.

“Newton, where did you put that cardboard box we got with the copy paper?”

From across the room, Mako lifts her gaze just in time to see Geiszler do the same, a frown on his face. “I recycled it like two months ago, dude! It was taking up space.”

Gottlieb huffs and gestures to the mountain of files currently sitting at his feet. “We need something to transfer these with.”

“Well just stuff them into one of the briefcases!”

“They need to be kept in order!” Sighing heavily, Gottlieb catches Mako’s eyes. “Miss Mori, if you’d be so kind as to take this over for me? There might be some boxes left over in the upper floor office.” And with that, he turns on his heels, cane firmly in hand, and marches out. Mako, following the requests, moves to the half-empty cabinet and stares back at the door once it has been slammed shut. She notices the way Geiszler tenses up as the sound of it.

It’s not really her place to meddle, but she cannot help herself.

“Everything alright?”

Her question makes Geiszler jump, and he nearly drop the mug he’d been holding. A slight blush creeps on his face, and he lets out an unconvincing burst of laugh. “Yeah, yeah everything’s fine!” Carefully, he sets the mug down, eyes dragging to the closed door. “Hermann has just been a bit on edge lately, it’ll pass.” The smile doesn’t quite reach past his lips. “No need to take it personally! He’s gonna blow off some steam as he walks back.” He turns away to go back to the cleaning, but not before Mako sees the brief curtain of uncertainty flash on his face.

It is gone by the time Geiszler walk to her with a plastic container filled with mementos and what appears to be sketches of various mathematical formulas. The man sways slightly under the weight of it. “You seen a marker around here?” She passes one to him, and silently watches him scribble his co-worker’s name over the lid. The box is left next to her alongside of the rest of Gottlieb’s belongings after Geiszler rushes back to his side of the lab.

Out of it, an errand paper slips onto the floor.

At first she thinks it to be another piece of failed blueprint, or a note. But upon closer inspection, it turns out to be a multiple pages long, stapled together from the upper corner. It also looks far more worn-out, like the reader has been handling it over and over again. The messy writing is hard to decipher to begin with, but the fading ink makes it almost unreadable. 

_“Dear Hermann_

_Sorry I haven’t been writing much! Things have been kinda kicking off, and this one might end up being a short one too._

_Before I forget: So sad to hear about your grandma passing away. I wish I could have been there for you, can’t imagine your dad was much of a comforter. I thought about calling, but then figured you might want some time for yourself, y’know? Hopefully that was the right way to go, I really wanted to try and do what’d be the best for you -”_

Despite the writer’s disclaimer that the letter would not be a lengthy one, it went on for pages. The close and warm tone of the writing didn’t change even when the conversation slipped to the academic topics near the middle. Clearly a personal correspondence more so than a work-related, and yet Mako couldn’t find the sender’s name anywhere. One would assume that there had been one in the envelope, but after a long moment of searching, she comes up empty-handed. 

Then her eyes land on the container.

**_Hermann’s junk #1._ **

Written with a messy, almost unreadable handwriting.

_… Oh._

A call from behind her snaps her back to attention. She turns to see Geiszler wrestling with one of the writing desks. And losing, from the looks of it.

“Mako! You mind helping me out with this? It weighs like a sin and I’m not sure if I can get it through the door by myself,” he asks, already out of breath. “I swear, taking things out from the drawers is supposed to make it _lighter!_ ”

“Uh… Of course! Just a minute!” With a quick work, she folds the letter again. After a moment of consideration, she picks up the rest of the similarly opened letters found in the box, and ties them together with a loose rubber band. The formal documents, the ones she is supposed to be going over, are moved to a neat stack on the counter, waiting for the moving box.

The pile of letters, however, is gently set right next to Dr. Gottlieb’s briefcase.

For safekeeping.


	3. Childhood

“Hey, watch out!”

Newton didn’t see the ball coming before it slammed him right between the eyes, knocking his glasses down and him with them.

Luckily Hermann had loosened his own grip of his arm before the fall, otherwise they’d both ended up on their arses in the middle of the busy park, Hermann already having a bad day with his leg. As it was, he merely stood, stunned and blinking at the space where his husband had been just a moment ago. He did eventually reach out his hand to Newton, and helped to pull the staggering man back to his feet. The glasses hadn’t taken the hit quite as well. Remains of their frames were crooked and the left lens had cracked upon impact.

Before either one of them could utter a word, a nervous voice spoke out behind them.

“Oh my gosh! Sorry mister, we didn’t meant to...” A small girl, perhaps around 6 years old, was gazing up at them, face twisted with worry. “It was an accident!” 

There was a group of children waiting at the edge of the football field, all frozen in place. It was now obvious where the missile had come from, and judging by the shocked expressions on every face, it had come as much as a surprise for them as it had for Newton.

Already getting his bearings, Newton slipped the broken glasses into his pocket and flashed out a smile. “Oh don’t worry about it! My fault really, not looking at where I was going.” He had been quite engaged in his conversation with Hermann after all. He glanced down and saw the ball right next to him. “You want this back?”

Without waiting for an answer, he placed the ball to the girls still trembling hands. The girl murmured another apology, but after witnessing Newton’s wide grin, she visibly relaxed and even waved at them before running to her friends, ball securely in her grasp.

“They are so carefree at that age,” Newton sighed.

Startled, Hermann glanced at him, and then back to the group of kids. “I suppose so.” Uneasily, he changed his grip of his cane. “Were... were you so jovial as a child?”

They had talked much over the years, obviously. How could they not, having shared the living space for better part of their adult lives. The topic of childhood, however, had been the one remaining mainly untouched after the Drift. In a way, it had been easier to just let it be, all the sensations and most of the memories being shared in a much more deeper way. But alas, Newton had spoken out, and Hermann was unable to resist the desire to actually _hear_ the answer.

“Nah, the advanced schooling took care of that. Not too many kids at my age there, you know.” There was a pebble in the walkway, which Newton kicked away as they continued their stroll. “Didn’t do too well in the hobby department either. Most other folks didn’t much care for the biology in the same level.” Despite his tone, Newton did huff out a laugh. “So no, not too happy childhood in that regard. But I had pretty awesome parents, so I can’t really complain.”

Hermann was half expecting for his question being hurled back at him. After all, Newton was aware how tense his relationship was with his father, even to this day, long after the war. They rarely spoke, barely texted, and when calling to her mother, Hermann didn’t feel the need to ask about the man. He had found a new family, Newton and the army of relatives that came with that, and was satisfied with it. And yet, every now and then, he couldn’t help but feel a bit bitter about the fact that Newton, at the very least, had his parents, if not the acceptance of his peers. Hermann, it seemed, had neither. 

But as his gaze drifted back to the man beside him, the thought was pushed aside. It always was. Newton was more than enough, what they had build was more than what he had ever imagined would be possible for him.

“Y’know, if we ever decide to have kids, we’re gonna make sure they have a kickass childhood, right?”

The pair of twinkling eyes glanced up at him, mischievous and playful.

Hermann felt himself smiling.

“But of course.”


End file.
